Dear brothers and sisters, Fiat and Happy Easter of Resurrection!
The Apostle and Evangelist John, in today's passage (20:1-9) speaks of himself, humbly in the third person (he calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved"), to offer us his testimony about what he saw at dawn on the third day after the Master's burial.
After the apostles were told by Magdalene that the tomb was empty, John and Peter ran there; John, who was younger, arrived first, but out of respect for the other apostle waited for the latter to enter. When Peter enters, he notices the cloths in which the Master's body had been wrapped. "Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. For they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” John saw and believed that Jesus had risen, as had been foretold. Soon he and the other apostles would experience it concretely, through Jesus’ various manifestations that enabled them to see Him, touch Him, and hear His last words, with the invitation to go and announce Him to all.
Thanks to their testimony, although we do not see, we also believe, and today we celebrate this. It's Easter! The long journey of Lent, concluded by the particular rites of Holy Week, leads today to the celebration of Jesus, risen from the dead. How many thoughts are in our minds, how many things we could say about it: and it is not surprising, if one thinks that this is the founding event of the Christian faith. It is the faith that has lasted for two thousand years and is currently the most widespread, with hundreds of millions of adherents scattered throughout the world. It is the faith that has shaped our civilization more than any other force. It is from faith that innumerable and splendid works of art have sprung; faith is capable of giving so much strength to face martyrdom. Easter has generated all this, and much more.
If we focus on an aspect that affects us all, we can say that Easter makes us reflect on the eternal and common life-death drama. Man, in an explicit or confusedly instinctive way, cannot avoid questioning himself sooner or later about the enigma he himself has created. We all ask ourselves: who are we? Where do we come from, for what purpose do we live, why do we die? And with death everything ends, or is there something afterwards? These are not rhetorical questions or abstract philosophical speculations. In fact, they are linked to our daily life, to our choices, to hope and anguish, to the profound reasons for joy as well as to the anxieties and secret fears that have always troubled mankind and much more in this period of great trial for humanity.
Well, today's feast gives a clear answer: it is reflected as in a mirror in the person and life of Jesus who died and rose again; He is the exemplary prototype of man as he was conceived by his Creator. Jesus is the Son of God, but He is also man, and as such He experienced joy and sorrow like every man, but always in the knowledge that He was loved by the One who prepared for Him a future of glory, of full and definitive victory over death, the most distressing of all prospects. Jesus as Man lived making His own the Father's point of view ("His Father and our Father": this is how Jesus called God), setting His earthly life not as a frantic search for Himself, for His own well-being, but as a gift to be given in fraternal friendship with everyone, in the perspective of returning "home".
That "house" that now welcomes Jesus awaits each of us, as children of God. The important thing is not to close ourselves off to others, and then to cry in solitude; we must not keep our eyes closed obstinately, only to complain about the darkness.
On March 31, 1929 Jesus told Luisa that one act of the first man withdrawing from the Divine Will was enough, reaching the point of changing the destiny of the human generations – not only this, but the very destiny of theDivine Will.
If Adam had not sinned, the Eternal Word, who is the very Will of the Celestial Father, was to come upon earth glorious, triumphant and dominator, accompanied visibly by His angelic army, which all were to see; and with the splendor of His glory, He was to charm everyone and draw everyone to Himself with His beauty; crowned as king and with the scepter of command, so as to be king and head of the human family, in such a way as to give creatures the great honor of being able to say: ‘We have a King who is Man and God.’ More so, since Jesus was not coming from Heaven to find man infirm, because, had he not withdrawn from the Divine Will, no illnesses, either of soul or of body, were to exist; in fact, it was the human will that almost drowned the poor creature with pains. The Divine Fiat was untouchable by any pain, and so was man to be.
Therefore, Jesus was to come to find man happy, holy, and with the fullness of the goods with which He had created him. But, because he wanted to do his will, he changed God’s destiny, and since it was decreed that Jesus was to descend upon earth – and when the Divinity decrees, no one can move It – He only changed the manner and the appearance, but He did descend, though under most humble guises: poor, with no apparatus of glory, suffering and crying, and loaded with all the miseries and pains of man. The human will made Jesus come to find man unhappy, blind, deaf and mute, full of all miseries; and He, in order to heal him, was to take them upon Himself; and so as not to strike fear in them, He was to show Himself as one of them, become their brother and give them the medicines and the remedies which were needed. So, the human will has the power to render man happy or unhappy, a saint or a sinner, healthy or sick.
If the soul decides always, always to do the Divine Will and to live in It, she will change her destiny, and the Divine Will will fling Itself upon the creature; It will make her Its prey, and giving her the kiss of Creation, It will change appearance and manner. Clasping her to Its bosom, It will say to her: ‘Let us put everything aside, the first times of Creation have come back for you and for Me; everything will be happiness between you and Me, you will live in Our house, as Our daughter, in the abundance of the goods of your Creator.’
If man had not sinned, if he had not withdrawn from the Divine Will, Jesus would have come upon earth full of majesty, as when He rose again from death. Even though He had His Humanity similar to that of man, united to the Eternal Word, how different was His resurrected Humanity – glorified, clothed with light, not subject to either suffering or dying: He was the Divine Triumpher. On the other hand, before dying, though voluntarily, Jesus’ Humanity was subject to all pains; even more, He was the Man of Sorrows. And since man had his eyes still dazzled by the human will, and therefore he was still infirm, few were the ones who saw Him resurrected, and this served to confirm His Resurrection.
Therefore, the Resurrection is the confirmation of the “Fiat Voluntas Tua on earth as It is in Heaven”. Its Power is infinite, Its Love is insuperable.